If 2007 Was the Summer of Apathy, Was 2008 the Summer of Bugs?

I wrote this post in the middle of the night/the early morning of May 24, 2008. I hope it's as funny now as it was then.
  
WHERE IS LAS PAMPAS,* ANYWAY? HE SHOULD EAT IT.
Current mood: scary bug!!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I KNEW THERE WAS A GIANT BUG IN MY ROOM BUT NO ONE CARED!!!!

I was lying in bed, thinking about how it was getting nice and cozy even though it was cold and lonely in my room and even the cat was missing, and even though those two reunited lovers were over in that one room talking really loudly to each other because when have they been able to think about anyone besides themselves??—when all of a sudden, rustlerustlerustle SOMETHING WAS MOVING.  And I made noises to call the cat to me, but there was no cat coming to me, so I went to turn on the light because sometimes the cat doesn't come, even for me.  But there was no cat.  And it was creepy.

And then I walked toward the next RUSTLERUSTLERUSTLE and all of a sudden something was flying by my face!  But I couldn't see because my glasses weren't on.  So I went to tell Emma but she was also trying to sleep and she told me it was probably a moth blahhhhhhh.  And I said, NO!!  The big creepy dead bug is missing from the side of my bed—because, you see, a couple days ago I noticed a big brown creepy beetle-like thing next to my bed and I poked it and the leg sort of moved which was scary but I thought it was just a weird dead-bug reflex because it seemed very dead.  But I hadn't almost stepped on it or squished it with a book in a couple days so that was weird.  Emma said the cat probably ate the big creepy dead bug.  BUT the flying thing that I saw with my blind blind eyes didn't look mothlike at all!  Plus, who wants a moth either???  But she didn't care so I turned on the bathroom light and turned off my light and hoped it would leave.

Thankfully, I was really sleepy and fell asleep, even though it was scary and those two people were still loud.  And it was REALLY scary—yesterday I heard rustling noises when I was trying to sleep but they weren't the cat when I turned on the light and I thought someone was somehow trying to break into my room or something even though that doesn't really make sense so I ran downstairs to my awake roommates.

ANYWAY, this is NIGHT NUMBER TWO OF THE CREEPY CREEPY RUSTLING BUG.  But I fell asleep anyway, but then at 3:20 I awoke, either because down the tiny hall they are still talking very loudly and male voices carry like whoa, or because of the RUSTLING noise that was BACK.  So I turned on the light and AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH it WAS the creepy dead beetle-thing!  He flies up and up all rustly and trying to get somewhere along the wall and runs into the wall and then falls on the ground and buzzes some and then haphazardly ends up in a different part of my room and does it again and it was creepy!  So I asked Ali to help me with the big scary bug in my room and Alex said "let her do it" and it was SAD so then I went and squealed some more because it's fucking SCARY and then I got a glass and couldn't find it but eventually did and now it is TRAPPED but AAAAAAHHHHHH WHAT A LOUD CREEPY INSECT.

Then I spent 15 minutes trying to steal me some wireless to make this ridiculous post that turned out really fucking long.

Now my foot is asleep, WHY??  I'm not sitting on it or anything, it's just asleep for no reason!  Scary.

*'Las Pampas' was one of the names Cooper and I were trying to give Table Cat, to Emma's dismay. Our efforts earned us the names Hegemonic Roommate the Male/the Female. Come on, geographic formations for names are hilarious. "Las Pampas is in the basement." "Las Pampas is attacking my printer." Grasslands don't do these things! Argentina is not in our basement!

 Above, the beetle-thing. Later, these were in/on our house. The last one is especially troubling—at the time, Emma asked, "Is this even from North America?"

What Kind of Person Do They Think I Am?

Last week, Emma walked into my bedroom and told me, "I've said it once and I'll say it again: you should really consider making marriage to a rich person your next career goal." She explained how, if this were my plan, I would have to devote my time to resting, perfecting my complexion, being cultured, etc. I guess I'd have to make time to practice piano and harp? It would be nice to have someone pay for me to watch foreign films. She went on to say that being qualified for jobs didn't seem to help too much in this economy, so I should follow a different path.

1. Question: Who gets married? Answer: An increasing number of people I am aware of, but still, not most almost-22-year-olds. NOT ME. I DO NOT GET MARRIED. And who gets married to rich people? Rich = old, probably, and we don't need to discuss this problem.

2. I don't actually know how to find rich people. If you do, pray tell, except I'm probably (as far as you know) not going to follow this advice, because I refuse to take this plan seriously. I have too much integrity (read: skepticism), and not enough initiative. Oh wait, on the internet. Ew.

3. Why do my friends make this sort of suggestion to me with such frightening regularity? (Any regularity is somewhat problematic.)

The summer before I went to Germany, I lived in a cute little house, albeit with awful tan-ish vinyl siding, with three of my best friends and a younger Table Cat, a Table Cat who took the initiative to curl up between my comforters and sleep on my legs regularly. Yes, plural comforters in May: it was cold. We called it the Krankenhaus ( = hospital, or sick house) because Ali and Cooper are always sick and I'm actually not that great, and...guests will think they're coming to get crunk, but instead they'll get KRANK! It's clearly one of the best jokes ever. Anyway, I was subletting a room in our dear Krankenhaus for the summer, intending to work—work enough to save money for Germany on top of paying rent, but if that wasn't an achievable goal, and it became clear fairly rapidly that it was not, at least to pay the rent and avoid the bottomless pit of despair that is moving back in with my parents. The summer of 2008 was notoriously bad for finding summer work, and I wasn't considered for any long-term jobs due to my imminent departure for Deutschland.

There was a period in my job search where I kind of...stopped. Nothing was working; what more was I supposed to do? I loaded the dishwasher and hung out in the yard with neighbor cats and read about German history. I used scholarship money meant for the year in Freiburg to pay my rent, then turned to my parents. One evening, we were sitting around and talking about how empty my life was. Now, to tell the truth, I wasn't so concerned about it being a little directionless, just about the lack of money (maybe I'm cut out for a life of indolent luxury). But Hegemonic Roommate the Male, to revive an old internet nickname, felt that my life was boring. He and Emma started brainstorming activities to fill my dreary days.

Above: Table Cat looks out the window, quite possibly at Yard Cat, pictured below.
 
Traditional employment was obviously not working out that well for me—although soon after, I got a job canvassing for a home improvement company, but how I went door-to-door harassing people for $8/hour and no gas money is a story for another time—so I'm pretty sure the obvious "You should be a stripper" proposal was thrown about. My response was probably an annoyed glare, or a sarcastic "Right..." They accepted that this was unthinkable for me, but surely I couldn't just sit in the house with the cat and reflect angstily on my life all summer. Everyone else had a job or was taking classes, but what was I doing to improve my lot in life? Besides checking out fifty percent of the Ann Arbor District Library's travel section and looking at the pictures occasionally. My metal-bodied laptop didn't even get internet in our house, because the hijacked wireless signals were too weak for it.

There are at least two piles of travel guides under that sleeping bag.

To make a long, wavering story short, they started telling me I should hang out in cafés and pick up guys. I was supposed to cultivate a mysterious, alluring persona: nice clothes, sunglasses, sipping my coffee—ew—and reading intriguing books. (I guess the Gossip Girl kick I was on for a brief period that summer probably would have been a secret to the café clientele.) And, you know, my computer would be able to pick up legal internet. This plan was not as innocent as it sounds, though. I'm pretty sure the idea was that these men I would pick up could at least partially fund my summer life. Maybe in a comparatively reasonable, yet still uncomfortable way; maybe in an exploitative, creepy way.

It sounded kind of fun, although Ann Arbor is not really the most exciting place, and it would be nice to read in more scenic locations, even if (or because) that would cut down on the impromptu naps I take in the sun, but I had one clear objection. As I mentioned in my last post, I was extremely stingy with my money for a while in college, especially since I failed to find summer work after freshman year, ditto for sophomore year, and then again the next summer, and that's how we got to this post. I guess. Anyway, the question was: how would I pay for all this coffee? How many days, weeks, months would it take to spark someone's interest, start up a friendship, find someone to pay my bills? To be fair, I might be exaggerating the exploitative part of this plan. Maybe it really was more about how safely bohemian a summer spent in the cafés of...Ann Arbor...would be. And expensive.

Too bad the cafés of Ann Arbor are not like these. (Ljubljana, Slovenia)

Hegemonic Roommate the Male said I could have his quarters to pay for my café-frequenting. He'd finance this new lifestyle with his loose change. For some reason, I didn't take him up on it. And then I quit canvassing and took intensive Spanish so I could pay my rent with university grants and federal loans. How romantic.